School choice may lead to improvements in school productivity if parents' choices reward effective schools and punish … ineffective ones. This mechanism requires parents to choose schools based on causal effectiveness rather than peer characteristics … City's centralized high school assignment mechanism. We use applicants' rank-ordered choice lists to measure preferences …

, improving the efficiency of school seats allocation. I show that parents of low-ability males select schools with lower peer …Expanding parental choice in education may increase system-wide productivity if parents select schools that form a … specifically good match with their children. I investigate the effect of attending a preferred school on student achievement in …

I show that parents select schools by considering attributes of the student-school match that improve the learning … outcomes beyond average school quality. Using the centralized algorithm for offers to primary school in London, I compare the … most-preferred school versus an institution ranked lower increases achievement by 0.10 SD beyond school value-added among …

compensated through school resources. In this way, by incorporating the behavioral responses of parents, teachers and policymakers … with school system resources. The model is rich, yet sufficiently stylized to provide novel implications. It can show, for … example, that an improvement in parental outside options will reduce parental and school effort, which are partially …

mechanisms, we then estimate how effects on attitudes, parents, and teachers could drive these results. Higher-achieving peers …